"The Catholic Church is full of child molesters!" "Ban the Catholic Church!"

The Pope's in town. He's the Bishop of Rome and the spiritual leader of the Roman Catholic Church (in case you weren't quite sure what it is he does). He met with a number of people who had been abused or molested by Catholic priests while growing up and shared with them his personal shame for what happened to them - and the shame the Catholic Church has suffered.

I once heard someone say, "they should disband the Roman Catholic Church for all the good it's doing" (by the way, I'm Catholic).

Fine. Let's ban the Catholic Church for the child abuse scandal. Then let's ban the Jewish and Muslim faiths for their unending killing of thousands of people over thousands of years. We can ban the Eastern Orthodox faith for the 100,000 Jews and Polish Catholics one of its leaders killed during the 17th century. Then we can ban the Protestants and the Spanish Catholics for the Protestant and Spanish Inquisitions, as well as the Puritans for Oliver Cromwell's extermination of Catholics and Anglicans. And on and on and so forth ad nauseum.

Is it "religion" that commits irreparable damage or is it the people who, in the name of religion, that are the culprits (much like the question, "do guns kill or do people kill?")? I've always been of the mind that religion is a wonderful thing for those who want it in their lives. Now I'm not the most faithful-going Catholic, but I DO BELIEVE in the basic tenets of the Catholic Church (I do feel, however, that priests should be granted the right to marry). I believe in God and Jesus and I pray every night before I go to bed. I don't believe in necessarily turning the cheek - I'm more of an Old Testament, vengeance is mine sorta guy. I also believe one can not condemn an entire religion based on a very ugly incident that erupted suddenly over a short span of time.

That's all I've got on religion. I'd rather talk about sex...